Are you open and ready to receive love?

Last Sunday while in mass, the message for the service was to “Be open and ready to receive love and share it”. It was a simple message but very complex to answer if we really ask ourselves, are we truly open and ready to receive love and be able to share it? It’s really not that easy.  Even more complex since we all have experienced love in different forms and some may even have a very defragmented understanding of what love may be. At times, love has been a painful experience for many.  If that is the case,  how can we prepare ourselves to be able to geuinely receive love and share it with those around us?

Of course, as a mother, I am always ready to receive love from my children. As a daughter, I am open to any time my mother calls and laugh together about random funny moments of the day and receive her “Dios te bendiga mija” at the end of our calls. As a sister, I receive the genuine “I love you” at the end of every sisterly interaction. As a wife… well, that gets tricky depending on whether or not he left me without no cover because he went overboard pulling on the sheets the night before. If I wake up mad, I want no love from him for the rest of the day. Either way, I’m open to his morning kisses before he goes off to work and the big hugs when we reunite in the evening after a long day at work.

I perceived myself as someone pretty open to receiving love and sharing it. However, as I really reflected on the phrase “Be open and ready to receive love and share it”, I asked myself if I’m really opening up myself to receive God’s love and sharing it? In some ways I feel like I am. However, after really pondering I realized I’m not fully open to receive his love and even sometimes from those around me.   I’ve been praying on it ever since last Sunday. Asking God to help find the way to really work on opening up my heart for others’ love as well as God’s so that I can genuinely share it. Genuinely love back. No messages were coming to me until last night my sister-in-law, who I truly love like a soul sister, gifted me a book of gratitude. Besides the fact that is personalized with my blog and name on it, I knew in my heart it was God’s way of answering my question.

She served as a vessel to send me the massage that the best way we can truly prepare ourselves to receive and share love is through gratitude.

The book is designed to allow you to write pieces of gratitude for 40 days. It also has a textbox on the bottom for scriptures that may come to mind that may help guide your reflection.

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I will begin my 40 days of gratitude tomorrow and it will end exactly two months after my birthday. What are the chances? God works in mysterious ways.

I challenge you to take on this journey of reflection on what we are grateful for. We will take time to write, voice record ourselves or simply share with a “gratitude accountability buddy” moments or people we are grateful for every day for 40 days. Gratitude can reveal itself  from simple ordinary moments to revelations about things in our lives that allow us to celebrate gratitude. Ultimately, the hope is that at the end of the 40 days we are more prepared to receive love from others, God’s love and most importantly… love for ourselves so that then we can share with those around us.

-Angie Galván-Rodríguez
AfroLatina Natural